Drinking Beer and Playing Pinball with The Newsroom's John Gallagher Jr.

John Gallagher Jr. isn't quite as earnest as Jim Harper, the reporter he plays on Aaron Sorkin's HBO series The Newsroom, whose second season premieres this Sunday (although he did once serenade Aubrey Plaza with an acoustic guitar). He is also not as altruistic as his character in the excellent Short Term 12, about employees at a group home for abused children (but he did once give the tickets he won at an arcade to a small child). So it seems like the only explanation for performances like his Tony Award-winning role in Spring Awakening is prodigious talent. I went to the bar Kettle of Fish in New York City's Greenwich Village with Gallagher to play pinball, which may rank slightly lower on his list of skills.

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ESQUIRE.COM: So is this typically what you're doing at four on a Monday?

JOHN GALLAGHER JR.: Oh, absolutely. I actually live right around the corner.

ESQ: So do I. We're neighbors!

JGJ: This is kind of perfect. When I got the e-mail from the publicist I was like, This is my kind of interview, man.

ESQ: Well, I'm always thinking of ways that I can get Esquire to pay for my alcohol and arcade games. [To bartender] I'm going to have a Redhook, please. Thank you so much.

JGJ: I am. We shoot it in L.A. But I think we do a very convincing job of getting people to believe that we shoot it in New York. We do come here a couple times a season to get some exterior shots.

ESQ: I guess you don't really need to shoot here since so much of the show takes place in the office.

JGJ: They do build sets out here for some shows. Like Nurse Jackie shoots here, and Boardwalk Empire.

ESQ: I feel like Boardwalk's production budget is a scooch higher than yours.

JGJ: Just by a few decimal points, maybe. But the design on that show is breathtaking. Their whole thing is so much more of an enterprise, building a huge boardwalk out in Brooklyn. That's one of the reasons I like to watch the show.

ESQ: Do you have to say that because you work for HBO?

JGJ: I forget sometimes that I'm in the HBO stable because I am such a fan of so much of their programming. Like, The Wire is my favorite TV show of all time.

ESQ: Really? What else do you like?

JGJ:Friday Night Lights.

ESQ: Did you see the T-shirt the Texas branch of Planned Parenthood put out with Connie Britton?

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JGJ: I heard about that today! "What Would Tami Taylor Do?"

ESQ: That's already the rubric for how I live my life.

JGJ: Yeah, I know. I'm like, "If I could just be a little bit more like Coach Taylor..." I think, Will I someday be able to be settled down, like a family man? The fantasy family in my head is the Taylors. You know, Todd McMullen, who is the director of photography of The Newsroom,shot seasons two through five of Friday Night Lights. I watched the series finale right around Thanksgiving.

ESQ: Did you cry?

JGJ: I was like, "You know, I think I'm going to be all right." And like the 15-minute stretch at the end, when Coach Taylor goes and finds Tami and is like, "Will you move with me?" at the Santa station at the mall or whatever. And the whole 15 minutes, I just cried silently as I looked at my laptop in my bedroom in L.A. And so the next day I went in to the set of The Newsroom and I was asking Todd, "How did you make it so beautifully?" And he said, "That show was so loose. They improvised so much of it."

ESQ: Just like The Newsroom. Aaron Sorkin's like, "Guys, just run with it. Whatever you're feeling."

JGJ: "Guys, just do what you want. I wrote 'a,' but say 'the' if you want."

ESQ: Do you really have to go back if the article is wrong?

JGJ: He writes in such a rhythm and so musically that every word is there for a reason. Jeff [Daniels] and Sam Waterston are the ones who set the precedent for getting the dialogue right. They're just so on top of it. I try to use them as the bar of being, like, "Okay, I've gotta just try to come in with my stuff learned as good as they do."

ESQ: There seems to be a kind of "Daddy, love me" thing going on with Sorkin and the actors who work with him, the same way Lorne Michaels does.

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JGJ: We all have such respect and admiration for the guy. I just think everyone wants him to be happy. You want him to be happy with your performance and you want to feel like he's pleased with what you did with his words and his language. And any time we have to do press together or anything, he talks about how lucky he is to have this cast. It definitely means a lot.

ESQ: Okay, so I have five dollars worth of quarters.

JGJ: Let's play some pinball!

ESQ:Tron pinball. Oh, it's new Tron! I didn't know the new Tron movie was so popular that they were selling merchandise.

JGJ: "Tron: Popular enough to warrant a pinball machine."

ESQ: This game isn't starting.

JGJ: Did your money go through? I blame Jeff Bridges.

ESQ: Me, too. When was the last time you played pinball?

JGJ: I think maybe some time last year or earlier this year.

ESQ: Then you better be good.

JGJ: I'm not really, really good at it but my mom is. My mom would take me and my sister to the arcade and be like, "You can go play your violent games and I'll just be in the corner playing pinball all day."

ESQ: Okay, it's working! I don't want to be rude, but your umbrella is really crappy. Doesn't HBO pay you enough that you can buy a real umbrella?

JGJ: But I lose them and break them and leave them in cabs and on the subway. I do need to get a proper one, like a sturdy one.

ESQ: Maybe HBO will give you a Newsroom-branded one.

JGJ: You know, that would be a great wrap gift. They gave us backpacks this season.

ESQ: Are they good backpacks?

JGJ: Yeah, they're really cool. The problem is, I can't use it.

ESQ: Why?

JGJ: Because I can't walk down the street with a Newsroom backpack. It would be nerdy and embarrassing if someone recognized me and it seemed like I was inviting the attention.

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ESQ: "Ask me about The Newsroom!"

JGJ: It's like Christian Bale goes on vacation and gets a picture of him snapped on the beach wearing a Batman t-shirt.

ESQ: You can get it monogrammed so it says "John Gallagher Jr."

JGJ: "As Jim Harper on The Newsroom."

ESQ: Do people recognize you?

JGJ: Yeah, they do.

ESQ: How often?

JGJ: It depends. Definitely more than I used to, because of the immediacy of being on people's TVs. But a lot of times it's people coming up to me, being like, "I loved you in Spring Awakening." Or, "I loved American Idiot and waited at the stage door and never got to meet you."

JGJ: Right, right. It's just the implication that children are involved. People get very, very sensitive since Newtown.

ESQ: I've been concerned about Jim Carrey since he started tweeting those really elaborate emoticons. They have googly eyes and Van Dyke beards and all the tweets are sent out at like 4:30 a.m.

JGJ: He's up all night, pondering and pontificating. He's kind of a fascinating individual.

ESQ: He's got a little bit of that comedian's chip on his shoulder where he wants to be taken seriously as a dramatic actor. Starring in Ace Ventura isn't the legacy he wants to have.

JGJ: You know, I re-watched Ace Ventura recently. It's a strange film to revisit.

ESQ: What struck you about it as an adult?

JGJ: Realizing how much I learned a lot about sex from Ace Ventura as a fourth grader.

ESQ: Like what?

JGJ: In the beginning, he brings back this woman's dog and she's like, "How can I ever repay you?" And then she drops out of frame and he grabs the ceiling and is, like, flailing all around. And as a kid, I was like, "What's going on down there? What is she doing?" And watching that now, I was like, "Yes, of course. Interesting."

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ESQ: Speaking of seminal moments, when did you move to New York?

JGJ: I moved to New York to do a play when I was 18.

ESQ: Did you feel grown up?

JGJ: Yeah, in a way. I was 18 and living in this cool apartment on the Upper West Side with this exposed brick wall. And I had nothing to do in it because I didn't know anyone and I didn't have any friends.

ESQ: Were you scared to buy a six-pack from the bodega?

JGJ: Oh, totally! I wasn't a good rule-breaker when I was younger.

ESQ: This doesn't totally surprise me.

JGJ: My friends would be like, "Come to the bar." And I'd be like, "I can't, man. I don't have a fake ID." They were like, "Dude, I can talk us in." And the idea of trying to talk my way into a bar past a bouncer gave me cold sweats.

ESQ: You were worried they would look at you and say, "You are too sweaty to come in this bar"?

JGJ: "Sorry, you're sweating too much." Ana Gasteyer was in that play with me, and she came in one day right before New Year's and she was like, "I have a ton of beer in my fridge from a Christmas party. Does anyone want it?" And everyone kind of looked at me. I even remember going out onto the street to hail a cab and thinking, "Oh my God, I better not let a cop see because they might ask me if I'm old enough!" And that beer took a long time to drink because I had just had my first beer a week prior to that.

ESQ: Were you the guy who played guitar at parties in high school instead of drinking?

JGJ: Totally. I would play guitar or video games or play a weird character and walk around with Aubrey Plaza, pretending to be other people.

ESQ: You asked her out by playing her a song, didn't you?

JGJ: Yeah. We just had this funny little romance where I really felt like I had met a female teenage small-town Andy Kaufman. We would go to the mall and our idea of fun would be to stage a fight in the food court, and then we'd run out into the parking lot and think it was so funny that we convinced everyone that we were having this terrible fight in public.

ESQ: Somehow I'm not surprised to learn that Aubrey Plaza did that. I'm out of quarters, so I guess I'll let you go.

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